A Town Called Mercy (TV story)
A Town Called Mercy 'is the third episode of the seventh series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Toby Whithouse, directed by Saul Metzstein and featured Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, Karen Gillan as Amy Pond and Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams. Overview To be added Synopsis The Doctor, Amy and Rory find themselves in the American wild west sometime in the 19th century. The small town of Mercy has a Marshal but they're not that keen on the new arrivals. They are also under threat from an alien, a half-man half-robot hunter who is out to eliminate the Doctor. Not the Doctor we know but another, Kahler-Jex, who has escaped from his world. He's done many good things for the local community but his past is somewhat questionable. Plot The episode opens with a narration by a woman telling a story about a 'man who fell from the stars' and cuts to a drone being fired at by a dominating shadowy figure. The man controlling the drone, Kahler-Mas is held at gunpoint as the creature prepares to execute him; he tries to take it out with a nearby weapon but is gunned down before he can. In his weakness, he asks if he's the last victim and it informs him of one last target before it delivers a fatal shot - "the doctor". Sometime later, the Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive in the western town of Mercy, cordoned off by a barrier around the entire town. Ignoring the barrier, the travellers receive strange looks from all around when they enter a saloon and are scrutinised heavily by the patrons. One of the locals, Dockery, asks the Doctor if he's an alien and his confirmation earns him the masses picking him up and physically throwing him out of the town over the line, holding him at gunpoint when he tries to re-cross. Behind him, a blurry figure continuously teleports closer and closer, brandishing an anachronistically technological cannon melded to his arm. While the townsfolk continue to allow the Doctor re-entry, the town's marshal, Issac emerges from behind and allows him back in and the creature disappears. Isaac brings the travellers to his office and explains that the creature, the Gunslinger constructed the border around the town, refusing to let anything enter or leave until the townsfolk bring him the 'alien doctor'. Suspecting he may not be who the Gunslinger was referring to, the Doctor deduces that the man he's really looking for is already present in the room and is proven correct when a man with an alien brand on his face emerges from cover in the cell behind them, greeting them as Kahler-Jex. While the Doctor expresses his awe of Jex's people, he explains that his craft crashed a mile away from the town and he was rescued by the locals and stayed in the town as a surgeon and engineer, given his background and since saved the town from an outbreak of Cholera and rigged up it's electrics with his ship as a generator. The Doctor decides to bring the TARDIS back to the town and help everybody escape and sends Rory and Issac to distract the Gunslinger while he does so. While he takes a horse out of town, Amy stays with Jex and talks with him about his backstory. On his way to the TARDIS, the Doctor finds a stray cable and follows it back to Jex's ship, setting off an alarm that alerts both Jex and the Gunslinger to an intrusion. Quickly shutting off the security self-destruct, the Doctor accesses Jex's personal files and his horrified by the discoveries he discovers. When he gets out of the ship, the Gunslinger is waiting for him and he agrees to help bring Jex to justice but the Gunslinger declares that he's not giving any more warning shots and that he'll kill the next person to cross the border - and it had better be Jex. Fearing he's been uncovered, Jex attempts to take Amy hostage as a potential survival chancer but Issac and Rory return and stop him. While he tries to explain himself, the Doctor returns and furiously informs everybody that the Gunslinger was Jex's creation, a cyborg built by taking ordinary soldiers told they'd been selected for special training and subjecting them to torturous experiments and turning into walking weapons of destruction. He also admits that after the war ended, the cyborgs were made redundant but the Gunslinger which had been damaged in battle went rogue and started assassinating the team that built it until Jex and Mas were the last two before the crashed on Earth. While the others try and discern what to do with him, Jex goads the Doctor's temper by insisting that the pair of them are alike in all but one aspect - only one has the nerve to do what's necessary. The Doctor snaps and throttles Jex, dragging and shoving him out of Issac's office and thrusts him over the barrier himself, pointing a gun in his face when he tries to re-enter. Amy is horrified by his actions and his sudden approval of having somebody executed and his states that he's done negotiating and now he's standing on the side of the victims of his being merciful to monsters. Addressing the fact that he's been on his own too long, Amy manages to break his bravado and evaluate what he's doing and he relents, allowing Jex back over the line, but not before the Gunslinger appears behind him. Just before it fires, Issac shoves Jex out of the way and takes the shot in his place. As he dies, Issac hands his role of marshal over to the Doctor and asks him to protect the town with his dying breath. The Doctor orders Jex placed in a cell and that evening, the preacher informs him of a disruption, Stepping outside, he finds the townsfolk rallying to have the Doctor surrender Jex to the Gunslinger so they all can live; Dockery, the head of the mob, tries to force him at the end of a gun but the Doctor points out that he's clearly too young to have killed anyone before and states that the townspeople becoming this is the total contrary of what Isaac died for. He promises Dockery that he will be able to save them a better way and gets him to reholster his gun and he disbands the mob. In the office, Jex posits why the Doctor doesn't just surrender him and he reiterates that it would invalidate Isaac's sacrifice, make it another meaningless casualty. Jex tries to excuse himself, stating that it clearly baffles the Doctor that he can be both the war criminal that created the Gunslinger in the first place and the doctor that forswore his past and devoted himself to the town he stayed in but the Doctor just rebuffs this as an excuse from trying to decide his own punishment for the atrocity he committed and that is neither punishment nor justice. Jex insists that there isn't any shame in wanted to surrender him, despite his promise to keep him safe but also knows that he won't follow through - "We all carry out prisons with us."; the sentiment gives the Doctor an idea and possible solution to chase the Gunslinger away. The following day, with Jex still undelivered, the Gunslinger storms into town to find him and kill anybody that gets in his way. He has a Mexican standoff with the Doctor in the town square and in the chaos caused by the Doctor disorienting him with his sonic screwdriver, Amy releases Jex and has him sneak out of town, while Rory and Dockery, with copies of Jex's mark painted on their faces, confuse the Gunslinger's tracking system while he gets away. The Gunslinger quickly recognises it as a trick and switches the manual targetting and goes in hunt of Jex. While Jex gets back to his ship, the Gunslinger bursts into the saloon but doesn't fire on the innocents at the sight of one child. When he finds the Doctor, he tries to direct him after Jex's ship when Jex openly broadcasts to him from the craft and, knowing that the Gunslinger will hunt him to whatever planet he ends up on next and put another race in danger, decides to end the war forever and restarts the ship's self-destructs, taking himself in the resulting fireball to finally give the Gunslinger peace at last. The Gunslinger sordidly reflects the Jex's behaviour was honorable in the end, perhaps more than himself and plans to disappear into the desert and destroy himself, the end of the war meaning that he no longer serves any function during peacetime - the Doctor then proposes that maybe he can protect it. Sometime later, the Doctor, Amy and Rory leave in the TARDIS and the little girl wanders out into the desert while a closing narration details the girl's great-granddaughter recounting the story she'd told her as an adult about Mercy's personal protector and the camera pans up at the Gunslinger, standing stoic as the defender of peace in Mercy. Cast * The Doctor - Matt Smith * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan * Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill * The Gunslinger - Andrew Brooke * Kahler-Jex - Adrian Scarborough * Kahler-Mas - Dominic Kemp * Sadie - Joanne McQuinn * The Preacher - Byrd Wilkins * Abraham - Garrick Hagon * Isaac - Ben Browder * Dockery - Sean Benedict * Walter - Rob Cavazos Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''A Town Called Mercy'' page on '''Doctor Who Website